One of the biggest blessings of having friends who are profesisonal, award-winning or up-and-coming photographers is that you get A LOT of unforgettable and impressive photos. If anyone reading this ever wants to feel better about how they look I suggest they schedule a session with Salvadore Brandt or
Martin Funck and their self-conciousness will go away. These men are magicians. The latter, Martin Funck, my roomate for the month of March, who I recently also met in Berlin, is the author of the attached photo.
I met Martin while visiting my friend, Emanuel Millar, on set at Babelsberg Studios in Berlin. Martin had met Manny last year as an extra in "Inglorious Bastards" and Manny (Emmanuel's nickname) invited him to come to America to pursue more of his modeling and photography career. Once again, while in Berlin, I was the benefactor of knowing Manny and his circle of artist friends and I met another master. This time, his month-long planned trip to America fell perfectly into my roomate, Catherine's, month-long planned exodus from Manhattan so we struck-up a roommate bargain for the month of March.
Two days after I arrived back from Berlin, Martin touched down at JFK airport, camera bag ready, and flash-batteries charged. Martin Thanked me today for "always having good ideas," about photography. I realize my good ideas are nothing more than inviting him along with me on my daily adventures and social gatherings, introducing him to interesting people, and then mentioning to them that he is an award-winning German photographer, who would love to take complimentary photos of them for his portfolio. Of course, no-one hates good photos of themselves so the people I introduce him to become "good ideas." Nevertheless, I thanked him for the compliment.
One of the "good ideas" we met this week was Lindsey Campbell. A dear friend of mine from college, Lauren Campbell, has a sister, the young woman in the photo with me, who recently moved to New York to attend a prestigious hair academy that will soon be featured in a television pilot. Anyway, no sooner had I met her and some friends on Monday for our weekly FHE social gathering at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, then Martin was fixing a shoot-date with her for that Saturday.
Lindsey had a beautiful smile and is one of the only girls who I've ever seen pull of bangs well, so I decided she would indeed be a "good idea" to shoot.
I often accompany Martin in his photography escapades as a liaison between him and the American Public. It's also just a selfish guise to have some fun in New York and vicariously make people happy by presenting them with a beautiful piece of art, in which they are the focus. In this case, Lindsey showed up to our apartment, we took some photos of her in variously natural lit parts of our Gramercy apartment, and then decided that we would head out into the grundge of the neighborhoods south of us to try and get some "edgier" shots of Lindsey.
I had mentioned hearing of an abandoned subway station somewhere downtown and talked about funky graffiti that could be spotted in the East Village so we headed out into the downpour of Manhattan. I credit God for having led us to this perfect location. I had no idea where an abandoned subway station was, nor which ones would even look grimy enough for some "edgier shots," as New York City's standard of cleanliness per station varies drastically. Nevertheless, we headed out into the cold and followed our general impulse to head southeast. Before we knew it we found ourselves in the Delancey Station of the J train South into Brooklyn.
While inspecting the station we saw that way at the end of the station, there used to be a mezzanine and a stairway that led somewhere but was now sealed off. The subway station was ancient so we knew the sealed-off door had to represent passage to some lone, forgotten underground. Luckily, through some man-holes carved into the side of the station, one could see that many years ago, before the station was modernized, there was an entire other terminal about 30 feet in front of where the current subway station was. To get to it, however, one could no longer go up the stairs and walk over, you had to jump onto the live tracks in between subway passings, climb through the maintenance slots over the electric-current lines that power the subway, and jump into the next station.
So... we did.
It was definitely a dangerous manuever, and probably somehow a violation of the Patriot Act, but nevertheless, a completely worthwhile endeavour. We ran to the end of the track, climbed down the steel service ladder onto the tracks, hopped through the service hole and then found ourselves in a different world. This half of the forgotten station was covered in graffiti and trash. So long had it been since life traveled through this station that the iron subway tracks had actually been ripped up or dislodged in some parts. Everything was covered in a magnetic, ashen, dust. It was silent, and the darkness swallowed any echoes.
It was actually a somewhat scary experience. Everyone knows there are people that live in the subways and the place was so completely dark and amplified each whisper so much, and there were so many orifices in that underground arena from which spooky noises could come that one could not help but get a little goose-bumped on occasion. Complex and cankered ventilation shafts bored into the ceiling of the subway tunnel, brilliant engineering in the 30's to naturally syphon carbone-dioxide-ridden gas into the fresh air above, would occasionally emit the eerie soundtrack of a whisper whisper of people walking on the sidewalk, over 30 feet overhead. There was also a mattress and well-covered bedding arrangement in that part of the station that looked recently occupied, who's unknown owner was out doing unimaginable errands, so we knew we were not alone.
Because the J train eventually shared the tunnel with this abandoned station again about 120 yards further down the tunnel, the ocasional passing of the J train would be preambled by a rumbling you could feel in your knees and then a light at the end of the tunnel we were standing in. And though we could see there were not even tracks in some of the places were were standing to lead the train to us, you still felt doomed as the J train came hurtling down the tunnel, it's deafening roar and screaming brakes finally screeching to a halt only 15 feet east of us. I couldn't help but think that some crazy serial killer or simply coked-up murder-loon would easily have enough time to hide in the shadows until a train was going to pass, and as it did, he could leasurely take us by surprise, killing both of us with a knife or a shotgun, or a bazooka for that matter, so deafening was the noise, and never even alarm people in the train station next door because anyone who's been to New York knows the passing subways sound like screeching karackens for 45 seconds as they hurtle past (a terrible run-on sentence, but complete nonetheless).
At that point my mind was just having too much, and far too dark, of fun and so I had to calm myself saying, "if God led us to this great photo-shoot spot, I doubt he would be putting us in harms way." Nevertheless, the space did inspire a treatment for a "Blair-Witch Project" meets "the Duel" screenplay whose treatment I will write tonight!
All horror-movie thoughts aside, we had a great shoot, met the homeless man whose mattress shared our abandoned train station mid-shoot, and returned over the tracks and into civilization without injury. We even passed an MTA employee on the way out that saw us emerge from the probably forbidden domain and he seemed to shrug it off as not a problem. I love New York. Check back soon for links to the entire cache of photos from the shoot that will be posted as soon as Martin finishes "touching them up" a.k.a. removing my copious acne from them in photoshop.
